70,000 Georgians rally to call for early elections

GEORGIA:Some 70,000 Georgians protested against President Mikhail Saakashvili yesterday, thronging the heart of the capital, Tbilisi, in scenes reminiscent of the 2003 "Rose Revolution" which swept him to power.

A broad coalition of opposition figures requested a meeting with Mr Saakashvili last night to discuss their demands, foremost among which is a call for parliamentary elections to be brought forward by several months to April next year.

They accuse Mr Saakashvili, who has western backing for his ambition to lead Georgia into the European Union and Nato, of persecuting political opponents and of failing to fight corruption and poverty across the country of five million people.

"We want our people to be the master in the country, not slaves," Shalva Natelashvili, one of the leaders of the opposition bloc, told the cheering crowd outside parliament. "We need a government which will serve its people, and not vice versa, as it is now." The ruling party immediately rejected the call for rescheduled elections.

Simmering discontent with grinding poverty, political scandals and Mr Saakashvili's disdain for political opponents reached boiling point in late September when the former defence minister, Irakly Okruashvili, was arrested on corruption charges shortly after accusing the president of ordering the murder of an opponent, billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili.

Supporters of Mr Okruashvili, who used to be a close ally of Mr Saakashvili, said that he had been forcibly taken out of the country yesterday to prevent him attending the rally.

Mr Patarkatsishvili, who has close ties to billionaire Russian businessman and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky, sold most of his media interests to Rupert Murdoch this week and pledged to fund Georgia's opposition.

"As a son of my nation, I want to join in your cause, which is no more than holding early elections, according to the constitution," Mr Patarkatsishvili told the crowd yesterday. "We must do everything necessary to bring a people's government to power. We don't need a strongman leader any more."

The protesters chanted for the president and government to "Leave! Leave!". Police were out in force, but there were no reports of violence.